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Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Appeal of Darkness

Why are we drawn to the paranormal? Perhaps because it is the Other, it is the great unknown. The lure of the darkness that resides inside us all.

Are Others real? Are there really paranormal creatures that exist?

Who knows, but some of us sure like to believe.

Maybe we just need an escape from the everyday existence that has become so…ordinary. In today’s world people want to stand out and be noticed or at least experience something that is different. Perhaps that’s why so many of us turn to the world of the supernatural for an escape from the everyday.

Wouldn’t it be great to have super powers? Or to be immortal? Super strong? Have mind control? Or just be super seductive and a fabulous lover (we can all dream right)?

Of all supernatural creatures, vampires seem to be the most seductive. People are drawn to the vampire more than any other creature of myth and fantasy. Vampires grace the pages of books and appear on the movie and television screen over and over again, each new vampire a source of amusement and desire to us. But why? What is the everlasting attraction of the vampire?

Before the 19th century vampires were just mindless monsters, myths and legends that were horrible and frightening, not sexy, not desirable. Literature changed all that.

Consider this description from the introduction of Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture written by Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger.

[The vampire is] “an ambiguously coded figure, a source of erotic anxiety and corrupt desire, the literary vampire is one of the most powerful archetypes bequeathed to us from the imagination of the nineteenth century.”

Vampires were turned into seductive and inherently sexy creatures that we just haven’t been able to get enough of. The unknown allure is there, evil has become sexy, darkness is beautiful. Once the monsters of myth and legend were shunned for their differences but today we embrace them because they are different, because they are Other.

Our modern society is full of disquiet, pain, suffering, depression, things that spiral out of control-real monsters and horrors face us every day on the news.

In entertainment we want monsters that we can control, monsters…Others that are appealing in their difference and offer us an escape. The vampire offers us all that and more.

I love many creatures of the Other world but the vampire is my first love and will always hold the top spot in my monster loving heart.

In my fiction, the characters are more often than not Others, with a vampire playing either the hero or the heroine of the story.

If you love vampires as much as I do be sure to drop by Fang-tastic Books www.fang-tasticbooks.blogspot.com for book reviews, guest posts, interviews and lots of giveaways with authors that write vampire and other paranormal romances and urban fantasy books